Aeroelastic analysis of helicopter rotor blade in hover using an efficient reduced-order aerodynamic model

This paper presents a coupled flap–lag–torsion aeroelastic stability analysis and response of a hingeless helicopter blade in the hovering flight condition. The boundary element method based on the wake eigenvalues is used for the prediction of unsteady airloads of the rotor blade. The aeroelastic equations of motion of the rotor blade are derived by Galerkin's method. To obtain the aeroelastic stability and response, the governing nonlinear equations of motion are linearized about the nonlinear steady equilibrium positions using small perturbation theory. The equilibrium deflections are calculated through the iterative Newton–Raphson method. Numerical results comprising steady equilibrium state deflections, aeroelastic eigenvalues and time history response about these states for a two-bladed rotor are presented, and some of them are compared with those obtained from a two-dimensional quasi-steady strip aerodynamic theory. Also, the effect of the number of aerodynamic eigenmodes is investigated. The results show that the three-dimensional aerodynamic formulation has considerable impact on the determination of both the equilibrium condition and lead-lag instability.